Andrea James, Photo by Hasna Muhammed
When I taught in prison, I memorized this fact: More than two-thirds of women in state prisons are mothers of a minor child. I memorized it because I saw woman after woman who could not manage visits with her kids—families lived miles away from the one state prison for females in Massachusetts. Some women could not afford to pay for their children’s transportation; others had no one to drive the distance. These moms suffered with each flu, bad grade, or neighborhood bully. They felt the mixed blessing of each child’s christening, birthday, or graduation. They cried themselves to sleep; they metaphorically clung to their kids when they made phone calls. They talked about them in classes, to each other, in letters, and to their loved ones. Women without their children leads to a kind of loneliness behind bars that has a painful tenderness to it, a pulse, a deep shade of the color blue.
This past August, Tess Domb Sadoff of the Vera Institute wrote an article entitled “Gender and Justice in America: Alternatives to Incarceration for Moms Aim to Strengthen Families.” Her comments underscore my point: “When mothers who act as primary caregivers serve time in prison, the loss of emotional and tangible support they provide—in the form of regular caretaking, income, housing, and more—can have a traumatic and disruptive impact on their families and communities.” There are also collateral consequences. The Women’s Prison Association reported that children of incarcerated parents are “five times more likely than their peers to end up in prison themselves. One in ten will be incarcerated before reaching adulthood.”
In recent years, diversion programs across the country have sprung up as an important and necessary alternative to incarceration for convicted mothers. Oklahoma, Oregon, and Washington have created or passed initiatives to that effect. Now, Massachusetts has House Bill H.1382, and on October 14, at a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, An Act to Create Community-Based Sentencing Alternatives for Non-Violent Primary Caretakers of Dependent Children was heard.
Formerly incarcerated woman and advocates; photo by Hasna Muhammed
Lead sponsor for the Bill is Rep.Russell Holmes of Boston, and lead advocates, the indomitable Andrea James, and Families for Justice as Healing, formerly incarcerated women who aim to end the incarceration of women. Sociologist Susan Sered, author of Can’t Catch a Break, described the House Bill in her blog, “This bill would require a sentencing judge to determine whether a person is a custodial, primary caretaker of a dependent child, and eligible for…a non-incarcerating sentencing alternative.” Alternatives would be based on “individual assessments,” noted Sered, and could include services such as counseling, relapse prevention, domestic violence, vocational or educational groups.
The women who testified for the bill spoke passionately. Ayanna (standing behind Andrea James) said how difficult it was to be away from her father, her primary caretaker, and that visiting parents inside doesn’t help heal the wounds of incarceration. Diane (far right) said why primary caretakers should be allowed to stay in their communities. Her child was born in prison, and all of her kids went to foster care. It took quite a while for her to get her children back. Marianne Bullock (below), founder of the Prison Birth Project, gave birth to her oldest after incarceration. Now she works with incarcerated women throughout their pregnancies, and noted how painful that separation is, when mothers have to have a family member, or worse, a stranger raise their child.
Photo by Hasna Muhammed
Leslie Walker, Director of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, said that there is 392 percent overcrowding at Framingham MCI’s awaiting trial unit, and that “it’s a preventable train wreck.” Drug treatment is far better in the community, she added, where it is cheaper and more effective than in the women’s prison. Patsy Ryan of the ACLU added that two-thirds of the women also have open mental health cases.
The goal of this legislation is to alleviate “harm to children and their parents or caretakers caused by separation due to incarceration, while reducing recidivism and strengthening family unity and communities.”
Certainly we do not need more punitive responses to crime, but working, evidence-based alternatives that keep families together. This legislation can help us take steps to save the next generation from ending up behind bars or from the kind of despair that fills our women’s prisons.
